


Two Species, Both Alike in Dignity

by Musa_Nocturna



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-27 23:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 12,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6303586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musa_Nocturna/pseuds/Musa_Nocturna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been 26 years since First Contact, and with the Normandy project being an unparalleled success, the human Systems Alliance and turian Hierarchy are working together more closely than ever. That means everyone's ready to get along now... right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just One Shot Between the Heartbeats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caryl (Kahika)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/gifts).



_I don't like fighting in hospitals._

As a preference, it was nice to know for future reference. As an addendum to the gunshots flying over Garrus' head and sizzling his shields, it was a little too late.

But the timing had been too good to not take the shot.

The human soldiers who'd unsuspectingly wandered into the clinic had been just as unprepared for a firefight as the thugs intimidating Doctor Michel; but unlike the thugs, they'd recovered immediately. Commander Shepard - and that's how Garrus knew he was on to something, _really_ on to something this time - and the other female soldier had fanned out and covered all the sightlines he'd lacked from his meager cover, drawing and returning fire as they went. Shepard's other soldier had dragged Doctor Michel behind the most bulletproof wall in the clinic and was crouching protectively over her, a shimmering, night-coloured biotic barrier covering them both.

The tide of the battle had turned definitively in his favour. Garrus didn't think he could've received better backup if he'd planned this op a month in advance.

_The paperwork is going to be hell though._

The humans seemed to realise it too. The walls had barely taken any damage from Garrus' improvised backup. Commander Shepard was out of his sight, but he heard the unmistakeable fizzle of an omni-tool payload somewhere on his far left. And while the other soldier - in a Sirta foundation hardsuit that looked like it had taken all the beatings it was going to take - was using her shotgun, she was keeping her bullet count down, hard. A sensible choice given her low-budget weapon, all accuracy-through-numbers.

...the thugs were a bit less accuracy inclined, routed into the far end of the clinic and trapped there. Once they realised there was no way out....

"Garrus, can you get that guy behind the pillar?" the female soldier called.

 _Hey, you remember my name._ Garrus leaned out of cover and took aim, but the bastard had managed to find _just_ the right corner to squeeze into. "No joy." Not without a grenade. C-Sec regulations were very clear about the use of grenades among its investigators. The soldier had a set of them on her belt, but ignored his suggestive glance.

"Hey LT, one's hiding. Wanna go fish?"

The lieutenant dipped his head up to check that the coast was clear, giving Doctor Michel a soothing instruction to stay down, and flared. The dark energy effect seemed to strip the surrounding light away.

There was a terrified yelp, and the hostile target hovered lazily into view, ass first, arms flailing.

 _Too easy_. Garrus took aim with his pistol, visor targeting assist assuring him the shot would hit dead center of the target's head, and squeezed his finger on the trigger--

\-- _loud rattle of a low-budget shotgun--_

Garrus' shot did hit the bullseye, but by then the target was dead in a messy spray of bullets, globs of blood hovering in the inverted gravity with its former occupant.

"Nice work, Chief," Commander Shepard barked, vaulting over the counter and rushing into the far end of the clinic with her pistol out on the possibility that there was someone left to mop up. But Garrus was fairly confident his visor was right and that was the last of them. Effective, he had to give the chief that.

She stood and cycled her helmet open, looking around the clinic. Garrus considered himself well above average when it came to reading human expressions, but as far as he could tell her face wasn't looking particularly proud of that speed shot, or the flawless, well-coordinated, casualty-free fight. And if he'd left it at that he probably would've missed the signs that his face read was wrong. But he'd been around armed humans - well, human cops - long enough to recognise someone who'd measured the fight as he had; the victory wasn't in her face, but in the fluid motion she set her shotgun back on the lumbar holster, the light nod at Garrus acknowledging his contribution; and her deceptively light strides as she went to check on Doctor Michel.

Commander Shepard had very curious company. 


	2. The Story of the Stealth Ship Normandy

Shepard was the first human Spectre. _Normandy_ 's departure time was planned and all crew were on board. Ashley had all her guns clean and her hardsuit as patched as it was going to get with just work and spare parts. She was about to start looking around for something else to do that would let her keep looking busy until they'd cleared the relay, just in case, when the lift started descending into _Normandy_ 's hold.

It was probably her imagination that the cart creaked a bit ominously under the combined weight of the krogan mercenary and his hardsuit. In comparison, the turian with his duffel and a weapon's crate looked like a light packer, and the quarian didn't even have that much, standing carefully wedged into the far corner of the lift to make space.

"We don't have any sleeper pods that'll fit either of you," Alenko was saying as they stepped off, playing the gracious tour guide and doing it like there wasn't anything different about the current bunch from the FNGs he usually herded, "So we're setting up a space here in the cargo bay for you."

"Whatever." The krogan's announcement of his opinion was, short, brief and completely dismissive. He tossed his bag in a corner and turned, heading back into the lift with a grumble about getting grub.

That brought Alenko up short, but just a moment before he started talking again as if the krogan hadn't just ignored him mid-sentence. The foot in mouth-disease she'd diagnosed on the Citadel was gone now that he was back in his element as staff lieutenant. He'd been the one to show Ashley around after Captain Anderson told her she'd be staying on _Normandy_ , back when it was still up in the air if Commander Shepard would ever regain consciousness.

That'd been a dour, somber affair, and Ashley had to admit she'd paid more attention to the sleeper pod part and been happy when the tour ended there. In comparison, this tour was almost cheerful. Garrus immediately took to asking questions about the Mako, and Tali was swinging her head around to take it all in. Ashley couldn't tell if she was just that eager to get a good look at everything or if the helmet restricted her field of vision that much. Made it easy to see her gaze straying towards the drive core entrance a bit often.

Probably not a problem; even if she could figure it out, it wasn't like the quarian fleet was swimming with state-of-the-art drydocks to build a stealth ship in, even if they'd had the materials, and that was one girl who'd be staying clear of the Shadow Broker from now on. So no, the quarian wasn't a problem.

"If you need access to the diagnostics interface, I've set up a special visitor account for you to access the ship computer," Alenko was saying, "The VI should have all the permissions you need. If there's something missing, come see me and we'll work it out."

The turian on the other hand? Ashley wasn't a fan of letting him into the system at all, but that was a decent compromise far as she was concerned. Her suggestion to Shepard to restrict their access hadn't gone over that well, but compared to some other CO's who'd hated her on principle and shot down anything she suggested just _because_ , it hadn't gone too badly either. Alenko was taking a reasonable precaution, and even if she didn't trust him to not go poking around, she trusted the lieutenant's competence at making poking around harder. Not for the first time she wished she'd had access to the fancy-ass computer classes after basic.

"Thank you. I've got most of what I need." He patted his wrist with the omni-tool. "Just extranet reference and the occasional dumb question. It's odd seeing a human interface in a turian console design."

"Yeah, I can se how that would be weird. Just being a half-turian ship probably doesn't make _Normandy_ feel familiar?"

Ashley gave up pretense of cleaning her already clean gun and paid attention.

"It is weird," the turian said slowly, sounding jovial. "Just looking at it like this," he gestured around the hold, "and passing through CIC it was like a dead ringer for a scout ship I served on. But the moment I look at any of the instruments, it looks like something out of a pre-war vid."

"That primitive, huh?" In retrospect, Ashley probably shouldn't have said that, but the words were out soon as she'd thought them.

"Errr, that's, uh, not what I meant," Garrus tried, backpedaling slowly. "It's just that all the software and internal mechanisms are human. I mean...."

_Yeah, we know what you mean._

"They've been in space for thousands of years before us," Alenko came to his rescue, way smoother than he had to. "I imagine even our advanced systems look a bit primitive by comparison?"

Garrus... shrugged? She was pretty sure that was a shrug. "I wouldn't say that; they're just less refined."

"Still good enough to put a brand new stealth system on," Ashley countered.

"Actually, it's because human ships are cooler." The surprisingly assured declaration came from Tali, so quiet Ashley hadn't been the only one to forget she was there. When all eyes turned on her she looked suddenly very aware of the attention she'd drawn to herself.

"Damn straight they're cooler," Ashley quipped, getting a confused headtilt from the quarian when it wasn't what she'd expected her to say.

"Cooler means more, um... sweet."

"Explaining the joke, LT."

Tali's head swung back and forth as she looked between them, wringing her hands in a very human gesture and looking pitiably adorable. Had she picked that up while around humans, or was it a universal sign of nerves? Either way, she was in good company with the feet-munching.

"Go on," Ashley said gently, probably surprising every tech geek in the room by being the one to ask the question they were about to.

"Well," she started slowly, maybe testing if the encouragement was genuine. "You know how all spacefaring civilisations use eezo cores that are developed from the same prothean design?"

"Like the ones we found in the Mars archives?"

Tali considered the question - probably not too familiar with human history - then nodded. "Yes. Except the prothean eezo core design isn't the construction blueprint we use when building our ships. We just don't have the same materials or technology the protheans did. Instead, we use it as a base template that tells us the necessary components for achieving the mass effect. So even though every space-faring civilisation studies the same technological theory and constructs a drive core that has the same effect, everybody's finished eezo core differs based on their resources and available technology, and on the type of ship it goes in."

"Like how _Normandy_ 's drive core is a brand new model, but the idea itself is still the same as the one from the prothean archives?" Kaidan asked.

"Exactly. The turians have spent millennia in a cycle of inventing eezo cores and using them to upgrade their ships; making the ships larger and giving them new more powerful weapons, then more armor to counter those weapons, and another larger drive core to negate the extra mass, which puts more pressure on the ship's power distribution systems, which requires larger and more effective cooling systems, which then lets them add more weapons, and so on. After several millennia of this, their ship design has been locked into place. There's modern variations, of course, but it's all based on the ships that came before. A new system would complicate the designs.

"But human ships are only a few generations old. They don't have the... the technology bloat, which means there's fewer variables to account for. And the drive cores are smaller, so the systems have to be made to operate with less power, which generates less heat in the first place. That's what makes a ship with human systems a better candidate for an experimental internal emissions sink."

The silence after her excited explanation lasted longer than she had apparently expected, and she started wringing her hands again - definitely a nervous thing. "It's just an educated guess. But given that the ship is divided between turian form and human equipment and crew, it seems likely the turian's see the potential of the new internal emission sink, but need the... less complicated human ships to try it on, and the humans need the turian's ship design knowledge to hold it together. It really is an impressive design balance."

_Yeah, she's smart,_ Ashley decided. She hadn't decided what to make about the politics behind the hybrid, and far as she was concerned, with Commander Shepard in charge it wasn't something she needed to figure out. But with her own history she wasn't blind; these things ran deep.

There was a soft cough from the engineering access area. "That's a good guess," Engineer Adams said, looking at Tali like he'd just spotted a shiny new friend. "What did you say your name was?"

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Or just Tali."

Adams smiled. "Tali, would you like to see our drive core?"

"Umm...." She glanced at Ashley very quickly; probably picked up the attitude, then decided to chance it and bounced down the access corridor. "I'd love to!"

Once they were out of earshot, Garrus quipped, "Quarians have a thing about engines," but he sounded impressed too.

"That would explain why the Council was so keen on funding this as a joint project," Kaidan mused, and she could see the gears cranking. "It uses our differences to help test new technology, and it gets us working together."

"Having a partner to work with is a good way to find problems with new technology," Garrus said. "And if it goes well, it will help you prove the human Alliance is reliable."

"Yay, reliable us," Ashley snarked. "So nice of us to be useful to the Council, long as this works out. What happens if it doesn't? Human ship, human crew, first human Spectre. Great way to blame us when something goes wrong, isn't it?"

"I don't think that's what's going to happen," Garrus said, shrugging again.

She was about to argue the point, a good long explanation about to spill off her tongue of how cutting losses and finding scapegoats worked in the real world, but one glance at Alenko told her she was tiptoeing the line and he was getting ready to intervene.

_This is too important for your temper, Ash,_ she reminded herself sternly, and instead supplied a way-forced smile. "If you say so, Vakarian. You know the Council better than we do." Okay, _maybe_ she'd managed to tone it down. She ended the conversation by pointedly going back to cleaning the guns.


	3. The Simple Rules of Battlefield Fever

_Dammit._

The prefab module wall behind Ashley turned into a crisscross of bullet holes, telling her once and for all that the _defenders_ of Zhu's Hope were very serious about protecting their colony--

\--and considered Commander Shepard's team the enemy now.

"And I thought the first welcome was cold." Garrus mused, standing behind her and keeping himself flat against the wall. Or as flat as a turian could manage, which wasn't very. They'd been forced inside by the colonists' gunfire, unable to return fire themselves because of Shepard's no-kill orders. They couldn't even use warning shots to give themselves a breather - they just had no effect what-so-ever on the enthralled colonists. _They're not fighting like humans,_ Ashley's battle-analytical mind was telling her, trying to get her to pay attention that she couldn't afford to give it.

_Leave our brains out of it dammit._

Ashley primed the last of the special grenades Shepard had given her and chanced a peek around the corner to find a good place to throw it. Had to make it count.

Her shields immediately fizzled from a shower of bullet impacts and forced her to withdraw, but a glance was all she'd needed. Unless the three colonists suddenly decided to come charging into the hallway Ashley and Garrus were occupying - which would be suicide - soon as her shields were good she'd be able to take them out with one solid throw.

"They're way too coordinated," she muttered at Garrus, taking out her frustration about the situation and her shield capacitors struggling to recharge her shields to a level that wouldn't get her killed. She palmed the grenade, ready, watching the corner of her HUD.

Much as figuring out their tactics - many bullets, thank you - might help later on--

\--she leaned out of cover and tossed the weed-killing grenade between the colonists by memory--

\--right there and then she was too busy avoiding killing people who were doing their _really weird_ best effort to kill _her_.

The grenade went off in a puff of smoke and gas, and the effect was thankfully almost instantaneous. Two down safely. So many left to go.

"Moving forward," she reported, getting an affirmative reply from the comms, but a hesitant one from just beside her.

"That was our last grenade. How do you see us doing this?" Garrus asked.

"What, I thought cops were good at taking people down without fatalities?" She quipped, but only half-unseriously.

"Ah, yes," he said slowly, "I'm actually considered fairly adept at close quarters disarmament. I just--"

Ashley set her comm to receive-only mode. Somewhere not too far away she heard another of the weed-killing grenades go off. They'd had to share the supply unevenly; she'd gotten the most because she didn't have any fancy space magic to shove people on their asses with. But the rest were running short, too. There were a _lot_ of colonists.

"Don't think we should be bothering? Wanna go in guns blazing instead? Who cares about a few human casualties, right?" she said acidly.

"It's taking a big risk," Garrus replied cautiously, the careful evasion of someone who disagreed but really didn't want to have an argument. "Your hardsuit is badly damaged. If you take more fire your shields might not recover again. Besides, we don't even know for sure if they can be...." He gestured vaguely around the colony, not having words.

Ashley had some.

"They're _people_ , dammit. They have lives they're supposed to be living. I don't know if we can fix them but we have to _try_. Now come on!" She turned comms back on and dashed out of the prefab without giving him more time to lodge another complaint.

Thankfully she heard hardsuit-heavy boots follow right behind her, accompanied by Garrus' dry voice. "Remind me to have a chat with requisitions about your gear."


	4. Mourning the Heart of Thawed Ice

_Geth, okay. Indoctrinated krogan, okay. Rachni? ...preliminarily not okay but coping._

The empty rachni-tank only punctuated the... the not-so-silent silence that'd followed one of the worst fights of Garrus' life. Chasing thugs around the underbelly of the wards suddenly seemed like a decent vacation.

Hell he'd even throw in indoctrinated asari commandos in his list of things he'd successfully fought since joining Commander Shepard's team. He figured he had a handle on them, in that they could be fixed with a good round from his rifle. Hadn't been easy though. If the commandos hadn't already been chewed up by the rachni, Shepard's team would've been in a lot more trouble.

In a way, he'd envied the human soldiers their ignorance. Turian military strategic stance regarding taking on asari commandos in close quarter ground combat was - to put it in Lieutenant Moreau's terms - "just don't".

And even then, he'd happily trade the current scene for another round of fighting. Fighting he knew. Fighting he could handle.

Crying.... Crying was harder.

He didn't begrudge Liara her grief. She was crouching on the floor, clutching the shell that had been her mother, saying her name again and again, talking to the person who wasn't there any more. And, from the brief, horrible exchange, it seemed she'd only been a small remnant seed of the person who'd been Liara's mother.

Yeah, he didn't mind her crying. At least she was reacting and doing something to help herself, which was more than could be said for him.

He just didn't know what to _do._ Garrus' own natural inclination in this situation was provide a good distraction, or failing that, wave off the awkwardness and try to get people back on track. But he didn't think either would be welcome right there and then; even Commander Shepard seemed to be weighing her options, torn between giving Liara privacy to shed her tears, or a shoulder to shed them on.

In the end, weighing from one foot to another and not even sure where to look, he wasn't surprised someone else took the decision from them. Chief Williams shoved her rifle into his arms - mostly a pile of junk after being used as a club, probably wasn't holstering to her hardsuit anymore - and swore something under her breath at him that he didn't catch and probably wasn't meant to.

Liara didn't seem to mind the intrusion when Ashley knelt, slinging an armored arm around her quaking shoulders and tucking her head against Ashley's shoulder. She started talking quietly in soothing tones; Garrus couldn't make out the words from his awkward good-intentioned privacy distance, but it was probably something way better than the canned script he had from training.

_Good work, Chief,_ he decided to tell her, later, once they got back to the ship. Good work for having the emotional courage and skills he didn't.


	5. The Weight on the Shoulders of the Woman Who Swore to do Good

_Sovereign is a Reaper. Saren's a tool. And we are so screwed._

It was the day after the day after Hellday by Garrus reckon; he wasn't quite ready to stop telling relative time just yet. He didn't even know where exactly in the galaxy they were, except that Shepard had given the order to head to the Citadel at best speed. Garrus had spent most of the day after Hellday sleeping, though he had no idea how he'd managed to fall asleep. Once awake he'd spent hours getting all the sand out of his hardsuit, his guns, and the Mako, and it still felt like something of the warm, deceptive but beautiful planet stayed with him.

Which was an odd sensation when the reality was they'd left someone behind. Somehow, the thought that the mission was - nominally - a success wasn't as comforting as it should be. He'd liked Kaidan, and he was hardly alone in that; most of the crew, even the ones who'd considered Kaidan a dry hardass, had thought well of him. Morale had taken a deep plunge - and on the cramped scout-sized ship there weren't many safe avenues for the crew to deal with it. Garrus had no idea how an Alliance crew handled the loss of one of their own under the best of circumstances, and given _Normandy'_ s unique position, he wouldn't be surprised if they weren't following protocol.

But one thing that did cross civilisations was dealing with the fallen's belongings. He'd been looking forward to going back to sleep again with a little aid picked up from Doctor Chakwas, but the cargo hold was occupied. Kaidan's locker, with its neat machine-written name plate and even neater content stood open with a hardbox in front of it. Didn't look like anything inside had been disturbed yet.

Sitting on Garrus' bed tucked to the side of the bay, Ashley stirred. He didn't know whether she'd only noticed him just now, or hadn't been arsed to care until he approached.

"Oh, right. You want the bed," she said quietly, but her low-energy attempt to jump down aborted mid-way, a hand going to her side with a grimace. Her brand new hardsuit, picked up at the Citadel last thing before heading to Virmire, was a pile of rubble now. It had served her well and saved her life, but alive wasn't the same as unhurt. And yet if she'd been in her old battered suit, or another budget one, she would've been dead.

Garrus was really, really glad she wasn't, and that he'd insisted to Shepard to lay down the funds on her change of gear. His initial opinion of her taste in equipment was long since gone now that he had more pieces of the story. Even bare-knuckled and dressed in skivvies, Ashley Williams would be a force of nature.

Right now though, she mostly looked like a raincloud.

"Well, maybe not right this minute." He sat down gingerly, making sure he didn't jostle her by accident. Injured human bodies were a strange mix of fragile and resilient. She didn't seem to mind the company, but once he stopped moving he realised he didn't really know what to say now. Ashley had argued, like a true soldier, that her life was expendable. And yet there she sat. Staring death in the face, only to be snatched away last moment was bound to throw anyone off.

Kaidan would know what to say. Commander Shepard had already tried. Garrus was nowhere near their level of ability. Ashley though….

He looked at her, her face deep in a frown. No tears, no telltale signs he'd learned to tell in human faces that she was deep in grief. More… angry? Possibly. On a chance, he worked the glove off his armor and wrapped his arm around her shoulder in a clumsy mimic of how she'd comforted Liara all those weeks ago.

She looked at his hand and shrugged with a strange, sad chuckle, leaving it where it was, probably more amused than comforted, but hey, improvement. "Have you seen his list of commendations?" she asked instead, completely unprompted. "It's as long as my arm. While I was cleaning rifles, he was getting certified in advanced weapon targeting-VI diagnostics."

"He was a good techie," Garrus agreed easily. "I don't know why he kept insisting on sticking to the Logic Arrest, but....." He paused, replayed the conversation in his mind, and considered. "I can teach you VI-diagnostics if you want," he offered instead, on a hunch.

She snorted, but he thought he detected just a hint of surprise. "I appreciate it, don't get me wrong. But he was the right choice. I just… Objectively, I'm not worth him."

"Yet," Garrus agreed, then realised - from her expression he was pretty sure he'd never seen on a human before, eyes glowing, mouth quirked - that maybe that wasn't the best way to say that. _I am not the right person to be having this conversation._ "I mean, you will be. You just haven't had the chance yet. Nobody becomes general by being really good at scrubbing the latrines."

She was listening now, hopefully picking up the meaning behind his clumsy words. _Simple words, dammit._ "They train us, drills us, have us exercise everything we learn, but we both know there's no substitute for experience. To become good, we have to be out here, doing things."

"Yeah," she agreed, with a tired sigh. She knew how it worked, just as well as he did.

"The Alliance didn't do you any favours by putting you on guarding farmers and watching grass grow. Not your fault they've wasted your talents," he assured her. "If you'd worked this hard in the Hierarchy you'd be well on your way to full lieutenant by now."

By the way her eyes turned acid, that had been the wrong thing to say. "Yeah look, I'm not in the mood for your superiority complex right now."

"Wait, I didn't mean it like that." He gave her arm a gentle squeeze, entirely prepared to let go if she looked like she was about to sock him. "I, uh, just meant you weren't given a fair chance and Kaidan knew that. He saw everything you could be if you'd been given that chance. He wanted you to have it."

There was one last flash of anger that gave way to grief a moment later, the first few tears accompanied by a whispered _dammit_. He thought he'd blown it, noted filed and logged to not be an idiot in the future. But she stayed, and she wasn't quiet about crying. He hadn't expected her to be.


	6. Just Wild Beat Communication

"This is going to take a while," Commander Shepard sighed, just loud enough to be heard over the din in Flux. "I'm going to give the crew liberty to blow off some steam, with instructions to stagger returning to the ship so nobody gets suspicious. Why don't you two--" She mulled it over and glanced around, "Stay here and look glum. Should convince anyone watching I'm not planning anything."

"I think we can manage that," Garrus replied with ease that was probably lost on the commander, who did one final mental estimate of his and Ashley's acting abilities before following Captain Anderson.

"How do turians blow off steam anyway?" Ashley wondered morosely, poking at the frilly umbrella in her drink. He hadn't taken her for an optimist, but getting locked out of their own ship had hit her hard.

"There is alcohol is involved, sometimes," Garrus said and flagged down a passing waitress and placed a levo order along with his own. He was about to elaborate, but the sensation of their commander's change in mood - honed by months of following her every order - drew their attention to a ruckus just outside the door.

"Jerkasses," Ashley declared as Shepard paved her way through more of the human protesters who'd been raising the noise level outside of Flux. Though years of handling messy situations in C-Sec told Garrus they weren't quite being noisy enough or disruptive enough to be removed. Likely on purpose. These kinds of protesters always knew where the line was and were fast to abandon one of their own if they failed to heed it. It made justifying getting rid of them hard for the red tape mess more concerned with rights and freedoms than order and justice.

"I don't get it," he mused. "I hear a lot of people who don't like them, but somehow they're still here. How do they stay endorsed?"

"Because under all the bullshit they have a fucking good point and people know it," Ashley said sourly. "But all the other parties are tripping over themselves trying to _not_ be like Terra Firma in any way so there aren't any reasonable alternatives."

"What point is that?" He asked, then reassured her, "It's just curiosity," when she cast him a dubious look. Another piece of the human puzzle.

"The Council has too much power," she said, taking his question as sincere, "And they're not exactly going to let us keep growing on our own. Not if it means we might eventually kick your asses. Again." There was a hint of something darkly amused in her voice and a gleam in her eyes, and a few months ago he would've fallen for it. But he knew her too well - knew _them_ too well.

_Blowing off steam, right._ He wasn't going to bite, but no harm in playing along. "Well, if we have to get our asses kicked, I think we'd all prefer if it were by someone who deserved it."

She laughed, not a happy laugh but real all the same, then snorted when the waitress brought their drinks around. He was about to ask what she was reacting to, but she held the glass up - a glow-in-the-dark pink concoction a human C-Sec friend had sworn by - and grinned. "This is it, I'm observing Armistice Day with a turian. It doesn't get more ironic than this."

"Is that such a bad thing?" He hadn't realised today was the day, but didn't mind the amusement that snuck into his voice.

"No, you're okay enough. Plus, it pisses _them_ off." She nodded at the yellers outside the door, then clinked her glass to his in a curious gesture of human custom he still hadn't quite worked out all the social implications of. But Ashley was pretty easy to read, and her toast was as simple as it was honest. "To peace, may we not fuck it up."

"To peace," he agreed.

She took a test-sip of the drink he'd ordered her and her grimace was everything he'd hoped for; shaking her head and blinking.

"I have insta-sober shots on me," he assured her with a chuckle, glad for old habits. "We can be back to hitting bullseyes from two clicks away in a minute."

"Ooh I hate that stuff," she declared faux-cheerfully, then gamely took another gulp of the drink anyway, because she was Ashley. Never a dull edge, never an empty magazine. She peered at him. "Do you have any like that?" she asked, and it took him a moment to connect the question to the protesters.

"Not exactly. We're not a democracy, so there's no popularity contest among political parties," he explained. It was a standing argument between the asari Republics and the Hierarchy for as long as they'd been part of Citadel space. The asari tolerated the Hierarchy's way of doing things but tried to change it every century or so, while his people stubbornly dug their heels in. When you knew how fickle the otherwise glacier-paced asari e-democracy could be when something wasn't going their way, the Hierarchy's stability seemed like the better alternative. "We do have some, hmm," he considered, casting around for words, "Armchair admirals?" he tried, not a perfect translation given that many of them _were_ admirals, "Who aren't too happy with the current standing agreements."

"Normandy project really soured their day, huh?" She sounded cheerful at the prospect of unhappy brass. Something they had in common.

"Could say that. But it goes all the way back to the aftermath of the relay 314 incident."

"Yeah?" If she'd been a varren, her ears would be standing up.

"Turns out, you can't really sneak a fleet out of Hierarchy space without somebody noticing. Some people, particularly older generation, didn't like it when the Citadel intervened to imposed this peace. They felt it was, hmm." He considered, taking a lap of his own drink. Something else needed explaining first. "There's this thing about being galactic peacekeepers," he started instead. "In theory it's just supposed to be about doing what needs to be done, and as long as it gets done, how you feel about it isn't important. But... well. We don't elect our most popular to the higher ranks. We're a meritocracy. Each station is filled by the most experienced and most skilled. Except peacekeeping doesn't really give you the right type of experience. Fighting mercs and pirates, and winning big is good enough for doing your duty, but not good enough to excell. That's when you need a _challenging_ opponent."

"You sound like Wrex," Ashley said, but not as dismissive as he'd anticipated. Her question had been as sincere as his - she was listening to his answer. Though he couldn't tell if he was confirming her suspicions or challenging them.

"Hah. Guess I do." Scary thought. "Point is though, the relay incident could have been avoided. The captain who came across the human ship tinkering on the relay had a choice, and he chose to make a fight of it. The task force who first learned of Shanxi could've tried diplomacy, but they didn't. Because fighting humans wasn't necessary, but it was _possible,_ and rewarding. You were an exciting new enemy, with brand new tactics and strategies to adapt to and win over. The opportunity was far too enticing to turn down." And she would never hear it that honestly from anyone else. Far as the official Hierarchy story was concerned, it had been just another working day.

Her eyes narrowed, something heated creeping into her mood. "Dropping rocks from orbit until we had to surrender was a real challenge, huh?"

"Maybe that was a bit excessive," he agreed, hoping to soothe the ruffled feathers. "But the surrender? That was an effective strategy. Had us completely fooled. See, when other armies surrender, we generally assume they're beaten. The Hierarchy don't tend to lose wars. That hubris is what lost us Shanxi."

"No idea we had a fleet in our pocket, huh?" she said, with an accompanying smirk.

"Not a clue. Far as the history books are concerned, that's going to go down as the best ambush ever. And then when we were about to strike back, the Council came and snatched victory out of our hands and scolded us for doing the thing we're on the Council to do." He spread his hands. "It bred a lot of resentment against humanity, that maybe isn't entirely deserved. So, yeah. There's some less than tolerant people out there. For the most part though, they can't advance to intergalactic positions, so you won't see them here."

" _Right_." She didn't seemed like she believed the last part, but peered at him over the rim of her pink but mostly empty glass. "Ask you something?"

"Sure?" They'd just had what he considered passed for a touchy conversation topic, and nobody was bleeding.

"What do you think would've happened if your fleet had found out about Earth before the Council found out about us?"

_...what a question._ He leaned back and looked out the window, considering. It was a speculation that came up in certain circles every now and then, and it tended to point in one particular popular direction. And Ashley didn't need him to spell out the words to know it.

"You know," he said, "I don't think either of us would've liked that all that much."


	7. The Indomitable Human Spirit That Commands

Garrus stood in _Normandy_ 's CIC surrounded by organised chaos. The deck thrummed as Joker finally got his wish to test the ship's thrusters under actual conditions, and Garrus realised his own glee in part stemmed from knowing just how many Citadel traffic regulations they were breaking in their departure and transit towards the Citadel's relays. There was no space more controlled in the galaxy than the Citadel, and they were sneaking out unannounced.

And if it all went badly, the human crew around him stood to lose _everything_. If there was one thing that wasn't tolerated in either society, it was a commanding officer taking matters into their own hands without properly given orders from the correct level of chain of command.

That was why the galaxy needed Spectres.

And humans, apparently.

Navigator Pressly was rushing around the nav. console, barking commands at the flight crew and juggling all the ugly aspects of taking a stealth ship through a heavily trafficked area without bumping into anything, while performing mass transit calculations for the relay. Calculations that would've normally been performed well in advance of transit, if they hadn't been locked out of the system. Small ships could make an imprecise relay transit without ending up on the left side of tomorrow, but it wasn't without risk.

And Garrus wasn't worried.

"Any sign of pursuit?" Pressly requested of the sensor tech, "Do I have to count evasive maneuvers into this mess?"

"No sir, not detecting any ships changing their course."

"Even if they spot us running, they'll request confirmation before engaging in pursuit since we're not going out guns blazing," Garrus said, with certainty of long experience. "Because the lockdown order came from your ambassador that's who they'll check in with. If they can't reach him, they'll try whoever's next in line." He grinned. "It might take a while." First, and probably only time he was thankful for protocol.

"Joker will be disappointed," Pressly grumped, but nodded quickly at Garrus before going back to minding the ship.

That he'd taken Garrus word wasn't lost on him.


	8. On the Doorstep in the Long Night's First Hour

The doorbell rang a second time just as Garrus woke up enough to roll himself out of bed, the after-image of his omni-tool's too-bright clock still burned on his retinas.

It was way too early for a social call. Way too early for any kind of visitors to his tiny Citadel ward apartment - unless it was bad news. He hated bad news, but it was just bad form to turn someone away before at least hearing them out. News at this hour was rarely trivial.

The door slid open with a quiet hush to reveal a bedraggled-looking Ashley Williams, ashen-faced, nervously shifting and glancing down the corridor, eyes squinting against the light. Her hair was tied back, but messier than he'd ever seen it, and her uniform looked brand new, but fit badly. Somehow that last bit bothered him the most.

"Please tell me you have some booze," she started without preamble the moment she realised he'd opened the door - sluggish response time, another bad sign. His heart sank. Something was wrong. Last time he'd seen her, three weeks ago when he'd left _Normandy_ to try to re-integrate himself into C-Sec, everything had been fine. Commander Shepard was sending everyone out into the galaxy to spread the word of the Reapers. Ashley had been a few weeks out of reassignment to officer training, leading ground squads against geth for command practice.

_Something's definitely gone horribly wrong._

"I can fake some," he said, gesturing her inside, glancing out the corridor by habit, but didn't see anyone.

"Thanks," she sighed earnestly and tiredly, dragging herself inside and slumping onto his reading chair without being prompted to make herself comfortable, too tired to use the manners neither of them considered that important in the first place. "And I'm not actually here, okay?" She rasped as an afterthought.

"Understood." That explained the shiftiness, but gave no hints as to _why._

Garrus fished around in the far bottom of the cabinet until he found the dusty levo bottle of scotch whiskey that he'd bought years ago on a whim after introduction training had introduced him to human culture. He wasn't sure it was appropriate, but it had the requisite alcohol content, and Ashley seemed perfectly content to ignore the specifics - and the offered glass.

"Thanks," she said again, voice even coarser. "You have no idea how--" she broke off, grimaced.

"I think I might," Garrus said gently. "I don't know what happened, but… it's bad, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?" It was the right thing to say, but not an easy thing to ask.

"Hell no," Ashley objected with a defeated sigh, then started doing it anyway, sitting herself up stiffly in his chair and talking distantly, laying out each word precisely, mechanically, just like giving the debrief he could tell she'd already given a dozen times by now.

She wasn't even halfway into the description of _Normandy_ 's last battle by the time Garrus wanted to join her on the short trip to inebriation. But he had to listen. He had to _know_.

After, when his head was full of questions she couldn't answer, emotions he had no idea how to start processing, she put a hand on his.

"They're splitting the crew up. We're being reassigned. They're putting a lid on it, on Sovereign, on the reapers, _everything._ I can't even find any of the others to tell them what's going on. I got Liara's answering machine, left her a message but she hasn't gotten back to me. Wrex and Tali... I have no idea how to reach them. It's not like the Flotilla has a forwarding address, and who knows where Wrex is. Without-- without Shepard, I don't know how we're going to be able to convince anyone about the reapers now."

The one person who'd seen the Prothean vision first hand. The one everyone had followed, trusted.

_Gone._

"We'll figure something out," he said mechanically, head spinning.

Neither of them believed him.


	9. The Words of a Man with Nothing Left to Lose

People-spotting had never been one of Garrus' past-time activities in all the time he'd spent working on the Citadel. But now, with a lot of heavy emotions on his mind and an even heavier weight off his shoulders, it was... strange... to be watching people going about their daily lives as if nothing monumental had just happened. He could see the appeal of getting lost in the hustle and bustle of the wards below, but didn't care to join them. His perch on a rarely-used C-Sec monitoring balcony - one of the dozens of spots he'd scouted for the purposes of finding and ending Sidonis - was quiet and secluded. Which was how he mistook the familiar voice for another hallucination like when he'd first seen Shepard on Omega.

"Penny for your thoughts," Ashley said, joining him at the balcony railing, leaning forward to put herself in his field of view whether he wanted to look at her or not.

"Ahm," words weren't easy to come by, but he scraped some together. "Do you take an IOU?"

She chuckled, probably what he deserved for getting the joke backwards, and looked him over. She didn't said anything - a feat for her - but he could feel her eyes on his medical patch.

"I, uh, took a rocket to the face," he offered before her curiosity got the better of her.

Ashley chortled, then whistled low when she realised he wasn't kidding. "How? Too proud to duck, Vakarian?"

"Yeah, something like that." He was supposed to do something funny with that, but didn't know what. Instead, he tried to draw together enough care to figure Ashley out.

He wasn't used to seeing her out of uniform. If he were to prod his memories he could've probably thought of the few times he'd seen her in civvies, but in his glumness the precise count didn't seem important. She still looked professional, he could say that much. And present, like she'd carried her own gravity with her, so unlike the last time he'd seen her, when gravity had been bogging her down.

When she smiled it was way softer than he remembered.

"How're you doing, Garrus? Really?"

Not what he'd expected. And hell of a question. Normally, peering at the world through a sniper scope had brought him clarity. Now....

"Fine."

"Yeah? You know, I've been watching you for five minutes and you didn't notice. That's not like you." She tapped her cheek below her eye where his visor was on him.

Five minutes? A chill hit him. He'd stowed the rifle before coming here, informing Shepard he needed a few minutes, but what had he been doing for five minutes? Anything else incriminating? _Damn it._ Had he made a mistake in the emotional morass of confusion? He'd been off the Citadel for a long time, it was possible he'd missed evading some security checkpoint....

"I assume you're here to ask about Shepard?" He said, hoping to divert her attention away from him, and maybe get to the core of why she'd tracked him down in the first place. He didn't flatter himself enough to think she'd come to the Citadel just for him; _Normandy_ didn't exactly travel incognito, even if her crew did... at least sometimes, so she was probably on the Citadel for Shepard, considering Horizon. He would just be a... bonus.

"Sure, if you'll talk about Shepard," she said, a bit darkly, but then looked him straight in the eye. He broke off from the intensity. "But I want to talk about you too," she said.

Why? Did she know what they'd been doing on the Citadel? About Sidonis? Fade? Was she going to--

"Hey, I know this is probably hard right now, but I can help you. I have a hover car right over there and a getaway route planned."

"Why?" He knew his voice cracked. Amateur mistake, but Sidonis had been too personal; the wound too recent. Damn Shepard for making such a simple thing so confusing.

"Getting away from Cerberus?" Ashley said, very much not a question. "Human supremacists? Tortures aliens for fun? Those things."

...

_Oh. Right._

It took him a moment to realign his derailed train of thought, and another to remind himself to breathe. "No, no, nothing like that. It's Shepard's ship." He hurriedly assured her, shaking his head to dispel the fear. So she wasn't looking to nail him, or deal with Sidonis at all.

He thought his assurance was going to help; instead Ashley's brows tightened, but her voice stayed calm.

"Is Shepard telling you you can't leave?"

"Um, what?" The thought was so incongruous with the quiet reality all around them. He reluctantly dragged himself away from thinking about Sidonis. Having only half of a conversation with chief Williams - promoted now, though he wasn't sure to what and now he was wishing he'd paid more attention to the world around him - had never been possible before; no reason to think he'd get away with anything less than giving her full attention now.

"No, uh, it hasn't come up. Uh, and it won't be coming up. I'm on her team to stop the Collectors."

"To protect human colonies?"

"Right now it's human colonies being attacked, but the Collector ships are huge. In a few months it could be some other people's."

Ashley tilted her head, narrowed her eyes and snorted. "Right. Can't have that. But until it's turian colonies, who cares," she muttered out at the ward, not to him... directly anyway. Seemed like he was off the hook.

"Shepard cares," he argued. "And Cerberus has the resources."

"Yeah guess you can count on a human supremacists group to put humans first," she said, sardonic tone out in force.

"That's the irony, isn't it? They're doing something, and the Council isn't. I don't get why they're so blind to all of this."

"Did you miss the part about the colonies being human?"

"Then why isn't the Alliance doing anything?"

"What the fuck do you think I was doing out there? Working on my tan?"

Garrus startled at her tone, this time definitely directed at him. "Wait, I didn't mean it like that. I know you were trying to help." Of all the things you could accuse Ashley of, not caring about her people wasn't it.

"Those people went out there because they _didn't_ want to live under the Council's rule," she griped, as frustrated at them as at Garrus, the Council, the galaxy, he wasn't sure which. "But they're still humans. If I'd had my way we would've set up shop the moment colonies started vanishing, but the Alliance decided we had to honour the--" she scoffed, "-- _diplomatic preferences_ of the colonies and wait until they gave us an invitation."

"Which I bet didn't happen until several colonies were already destroyed?"

"You betcha. And back then we thought it was Cerberus, except you know who's really popular out in the isolationist bush-colonies?"

"Cerberus."

"Yeah. So things were a bit complicated. And nobody, and I mean nobody, expected the Collectors. I'd only barely heard of them." She snorted, grimly amused. "First the geth, then this. I'm going to have to sit down and read to see if there's any other obscure species I haven't run into yet."

Something tickled Garrus' instincts. "The Collectors are actually the--" He paused, a little bit of his intelligence reasserting itself out of the funk. --"hm. An oddity," he replaced, not particularly gracefully, but still. If anything, his stumble got her attention. And his.

Despite the tenseness, nobody was yelling or getting angry right now, and both their guns were safely holstered and nobody was going to be shooting at them in the next few minutes.

Chances to make things right didn't come often, as he'd just learned. Now was a good time to start from the beginning. _Just like giving a briefing._

The thought ached, but he welcomed the pain, letting it make his mind sharper.

"It's a long story. How about I tell you over a drink? For old time's sake."

She regarded him curiously, calming down fast. He thought he liked this new Ashley. Just as prickly, just as temperamental, but also... steadier. More present. "Pick your poison," she grinned, gesturing down the ward.

*

"The Collectors have been around for a while," he started again, safely seated at an audio-proof booth in one of the fancier ward bars, drinks courtesy of Cerberus' expense accounts, with Shepard's surprisingly easily given blessings. Ashley was leaning forward, clearly curious. She'd made a quick call to someone, he didn't know who, and informed them to 'not stay up', clearing her schedule for him. He intended to make the most of it.

"The most famous incident you'll never hear about is when they kidnapped an asari priestess several thousand years ago, long before anyone except the asari knew about this place. They say she was a seer of some kind, had special powers that let her commune with the goddess, something like that, and best I can figure that's what got the Collectors interested."

"Yeah, they usually like odd people, don't they? Was she some kind of religious prophet?"

"I have no idea," he admitted. Shepard had asked everyone to collect - hah - information for her, but Garrus had only listened to Samara's lecture with his one working ear, too busy plotting revenge. "Probably not important. What's important is the asari wanted her back, bad. They spent weeks gathering a large fleet - large by _our_ standards - and sent it through the omega 4 relay." He made a dramatic pause for the hell of it. "Nobody heard from it again."

"Ouch. Somebody had a bad time."

"Yeah. The loss was so devastating that the republic that funded the rescue attempt collapsed in a heap of broke bickering, and the religion the priestess belonged to took a hit; millions converted out, it never recovered. The whole thing was so messy the source of it was scrubbed from the history books. You won't find any of this outside the _special_ asari archives." Which a justicar just happened to have access to, and thankfully didn't have to kill them for sharing.

"Like a race of cats," Ashley muttered. "Cover their shit and act like nothing happened."

Garrus chuckled. "Yep."

"You know about cats?"

"There's a nice human woman on our ship named Kelly who's made it her mission to cheer me up. Some of the vids are really funny."

Ashley chuckled, and dipped her finger in her drink - again, the eye-screechingly pink one - and flicked a few drops at him. "Yeah, that's the new dominant species in the galaxy, cats."

"Terrifying creatures. Anyway, point is, the Collectors have been around for a long time. They were here, spaceborne, well before the asari. And they've been a complete mystery, until now. Hmm." _How to put this?_ He pulled up his omni-tool, keeping brief eyecontact with Ashley so she didn't think he was fobbing her off, and started looking around for whatever scraps of evidence he'd bothered to collect from the Collector ship, cursing, again, his own inattentiveness at the time. It was now that he was relaying this to Ashley that he realised just how important it was.

In the end he gave up on making sense on his own and sent a quick message to EDI to compile him a newbie's-guide-to-the-Collectors to pass on to Ashley. It arrived seconds later. A guy could get used to having an AI on his team.

"Remember how shocked Liara was when she found out the protheans' accomplishments, this--" he waved his hand around the Citadel, "Is all actually built by the reapers?"

"Hah, yeah. Shocked's the word." She frowned the way she did when she was thinking on something. "But not as shocked as we thought at the time. She'd suspected something, she just didn't know what."

"Yeah. All the puzzle pieces were there," he said, holding up his omni-tool to transfer the files. "We just didn't know how they fit together. The Collectors actually _are_ the protheans. Or prothean derivatives, anyway, altered just like the keepers to be reaper tools for the next invasion."

"You're shitting me?"

Garrus indicated her omni-tool. She stared at him as if trying to read his mind, then dove into the files with the same focus and intent she'd devote to peering down a sniper scope. Garrus tended to his drink, watching her.

_We should've done this earlier,_ he decided, and released a deep breath, breathing out the sense of shame that came with the thought. He'd needed to handle the mess Sidonis left behind for his own peace of mind, to finish mourning; but now it was done, and the galaxy was going to keep on spinning, not caring the slightest about his confusion.

"Dammit," Ashley swore, looking up. He thought she might be just a little bit pale, but it could've been the light too. "This is big. If the Collectors are working for the reapers, how the hell do we fix this?"

By not getting wrapped up in personal vendettas, that was how.

He straightened and reached a hand across the booth, putting it on top of hers. "Together."


	10. The Message in a Bottle From Stormy Seas

_Question. Have you ever thought to yourself, "What would happen if a quarian made friends with a geth?" I admit I'd never considered it, but this is_ Normandy _, where strange things happen every other day. They're not trading weapon specs or gossiping yet, but the fact that they haven't tried to kill each other more than once is proof of true friendship._

 _At least that's what I tell myself, since trying to kill each other once is business as usual for half the ground team. But Tali's really grown into being vas_ Normandy _, I think you'll like her._

_Did I mention we have a sentient, chatty geth on board? It's name is Legion. EDI named it. They have an AI Shepard appreciation fanclub thing going on._

_Yeah._

_Unfortunately, that's all the good news I have I'm afraid. There's been an incident. The Collectors boarded the ship and abducted the crew. Shepard is determined to get them back, which means the timeline for hitting the Omega 4 relay moved up to about two hours from now. We'll be entering radio silence soon, so I don't have time to cover everything I meant to say, but in case we don't get back, there's two attached files._

_First is a letter for my family. If you don't hear anything from us for two weeks, could you make sure they get it? All the information you need is in there. Thanks._

_And secondly, if we don't come back it's going to be on you to kick the galaxy's asses into preparing for the reapers. I wrote down a list of high-level people I know, or know of, who have a reputation for being open-minded. They might listen. Good luck._

_/Garrus Vakarian_


	11. A Quiet Moment in a Burning Galaxy

"How come I get through a suicide mission without a scratch, and yet you can't even manage one mech?"

Ashley laughed, then winced, pressing her hand to her temple as if to keep her concussed head together, and winced again when her palm made contact with the fresh new skin there. Most of her face was a mesh of fresh skin grafts and old slightly less damaged skin left to hold it all together.

"Don't make me laugh," she ordered him once she was done groaning.

"Thought you needed it." Mars atmosphere hadn't been instantly lethal, but the exposure hadn't exactly been kind, either. It wasn't a pretty sight. When he'd first walked into her hospital room - even after having Shepard's assurances that Ash would be just fine and was going to start climbing the walls any hour now - he'd thought he was about to lose another friend.

The feeling hadn't been rational, but it had hit him like a gut punch after spending so many hours just numb. He still felt like jetlagged, going from Menae with its military presence and its dark, reaper-filled sky, to the Citadel in all its pristine, untouched glory. His homeworld was burning, but in the small room bright by the artificial sun and cleaned by overzealous cleaning bots, it was deceptively easy to get caught up in focusing on wanting one thing, just one thing, to not go wrong.

"That bad, huh?" Ashley said glibly, pulling her hand away from her face with obvious effort. "Don't worry, I'm scheduled for another head surgery. Nurse promised they'd fix the worst of the scarring at the same time."

"Really?" he said, making himself sound disappointed. "You'd look fine with a few scars."

"Oh yeah? You know human men aren't into them."

"Eh, well, they have no taste."

"And you do?"

He found he didn't mind her alternative interpretation. "We'd match, hard to go wrong with that" he offered, causing another headache-inducing chuckle. Unfortunately, she was still hooked up to all the monitoring equipment, and one of the machines started beeping in warning.

"Um, I should probably let you rest," he said, but somehow didn't quite manage to start moving from the spot. Probably something to do with Ashley's hand on his arm.

"Hey," she said, softer than he'd ever heard her. "Stick around for a bit? I'm--" she gestured vaguely at the med-dispenser, "--going into la-la land soon, wouldn't mind the company until then, y'know?"

"I suppose." Impossible to refuse, actually. He drew up a chair and sat down, peering at the equipment, then at Ashley with the help of his visor, again assuring himself that the little blips of the occasional weakened heart beat and lowering blood pressure was due to the medication, not a medical emergency.

And then... he had nothing to say. 'Hi, how are you' didn't seem to cover the enormity of what was going on outside the Citadel walls, or would cover it too well, bringing in the chaotic emotions neither of them - especially Ashley - needed right then.

He'd missed equilibrium, stability. Not words he'd normally associate with the exuberant, sometimes explosive Ashley, but there was a certain kind of comfort to them. And the silence was getting kind of awkward. Neither of them were exactly skilled conversationalists.

By the time she suddenly started talking, he'd thought she'd fallen asleep; her eyes closing at shorter intervals and staying closed for longer.

"Hey, could you do me a favour?" she said. "My sis, Sarah? She's here on the Citadel, got in while I was in surgery the last time. She can't get up here, because security." She rolled her eyes, and they fell close a moment longer than a normal blink. "They assigned her a bunk out on the outer sectors of Zakera ward. Could you go check on her? Make sure she's got a door that locks and a comm that works and all that?"

"I can do that," he assured her easily, glad to be _doing_ something, hopefully before _Normandy_ would need to leave again. Shepard had said her meetings would take a while, but, well, war didn't follow a schedule. "It'll be nice to know someone's got family safe out there."

"Oh shit, I'm sorry. Your family, they're back on Palaven, aren't they?"

"Yeah. Dad, and my sister." He swatted away a dark maw of emotion, so similar to what he'd felt returning to his squad on Omega, realising _something_ was off. "This feels wrong, but I'm glad my mom isn't around for this, with her illness it would've been hell for her." Somehow, admitting it to Ashley was easier than admitting it to himself.

Ashley waved her hand around, her depth perception off by medicine and injuries, until she caught his. "She'll always be around for you."

"Heh, that's not exactly how spirits work," he reminded her. She smiled and shrugged - and winced. Sucking breath in through her teeth, she forced the smile back. "I know your family's okay. They're related to you, they have to be just as badass."

Garrus liked Ashley's normal outspoken attitude, but with the aid of meds, it was better. "Dad is... well, he's a cop. He'll be trying to help fight. More like he'll be ordering people around, but... yeah."

She got it, he didn't need to elaborate. He was relieved when her tone turned lighter. "I'm the only one on active duty in my family, but we've all got _some_ training. Sarah's tougher than she looks, don't let her fool you."

"I'm sure she's as badass as you," he acknowledged with a happy hum. "Lieutenant Commander Williams."

Ash groaned. "Oooh don't remind me. I almost laughed the admiral in the face when I found out about that last promotion. I was just getting settled into being a lieutenant, I thought they were just kidding, y'know? Pulling a fast one on the--" she made airquotes with the right number of fingers for it, "--Alliance's fastest 'rising star'."

"If anyone deserves to be a star, it's you. You earned it."

"Almost earned it," she corrected. "Then they realised the reapers were real just like I'd been saying and panicked a bit, it's fuzzy on the details, but here I am, ready to save the day, just point me in the direction of a reaper." She made a sign with her fingers that looked almost like the airquotes

"Same," he admitted. "I don't know the first thing about large scale fleet tactics, but the funny thing about being in a meritocracy is that if you're the only expert on a subject, no matter how, ah--" he considered a few choice extrement synonyms, "shit you are, you're _the_ expert."

"Should I be saluting?" she grinned.

"Nah, you're out of uniform."

She frowned, suddenly pensive as if the thought hadn't occurred to her. "I don't actually know where my uniform is."

"I'm told the staff has been instructed that you're escape-prone. I'm sure it will turn up once you get better."

"What, you don't think I'd sneak out of here in a skimpy hospital gown?"

Garrus hesitated - a little too long as it turned out. Ashley laughed - and winced again, going into a cough that sent the monitor beeping unhappily at them again. By the time it subsided she was exhausted, and Shepard called all hands back to _Normandy_. When Garrus stood, Ashley's eyes drifted closed, but she still had enough energy to say,

"Kick some ass."

"You'll be jealous of all the action you're missing."


	12. Back in the Smell of Blood and Gunpowder

"Bleed out slower dammit!" Ashley ordered, emptying a good-sized chunk of medigel right into the _hole_ in Garrus' hardsuit, trying to plug an artery she couldn't see. Something - she couldn't tell what, his suit looked like it had been eaten by a pack of varren - had breached it all the way to his stomach, leaving nothing but shredded undermesh and skin and bones in one giant mess. At this point she wasn't sure if there was more of his blood on her or left in him.

"Trying," he mouthed, just coherently enough for her translator to pick up. Under them, _Normandy_ 's deck reverberated from the maneuvering thrusters firing wildly. If a reaper hit them, they wouldn't have time to realise they were dead. Nothing she could do about that, Joker was the best, she just had to pray and trust.

The medical personnell rushed into the cargo hold to save the sad, bleeding remnants of Hammer team just as the hatch finished closing and the barrier curtain keeping atmosphere in switched off with an energy-conserving fizzle as _Normandy_ continued her steep but, thankfully, g-force free ascent into the sky.

_I hate leaving the fight,_ Ashley thought, but not as bitterly as she expected. Shepard had ordered the retreat. Garrus was bleeding out, and, much as she hated to admit it, her leg was probably fucked and it was just adrenaline and a really good hardsuit power assist preventing her from realising it. Whatever waited on the Citadel for everyone who made it to the transport beam, her and Garrus would've been liabilities. Sooner or later, Shepard would've had to make the choice to leave them behind. Better it be sooner, when evac was still an option.

Doctor Chakwas, cool and composed as she ever was under fire, joined them omni-tool out, scanning, scanning--

\--frowning--

"I didn't drag his sorry ass on board just for a red tag, doc," she appealed, tiredly, her hands still pressing the medigel patch in place. She wasn't sure whether or not it was helping anything.

"This...." Garrus waived a weak hand in the air, mostly supported by his elbow on the deck, "sorry ass agrees."

Doctor Chakwas pasted on the patented Professional Military Doctor look. "Don't worry, Garrus, I agree too. Hold on, we'll get you to medbay." She twisted and called for a gurney with easy commanding voice. "And Ashley, please stay off that leg until I have an empty bed for you."

"Yes'm," she sighed, exhausted, snapping off her helmet and sent it rolling, glad to have the blood out of her immediate vision.

Doctor Chakwas ran a quick medical tool over Garrus' chest, plastered on a better patch, then rushed to scan the other ashen-faced soldiers who'd taken the sensible option to jump aboard _Normandy_ rather than get fried by a reaper beam. Shepard's decision had saved lives at the risk of the galaxy.

_Please look after my skipper, she's the bravest, strongest, most selfless woman I know and she could really use the help right now,_ she prayed, then worked up another smile for Garrus. His arms were moving, feebly but intently, trying to unclasp his hardsuit helmet seal. She felt around for it and managed to find the release and it popped off and rolled away, letting out more scent of bleeding turian. He'd coughed up blood, too. She pushed down the irrational fear that Doctor Chakwas had lied. She was just doing triage. Sit tight and follow instructions was the name of the game.

_And keep Garrus alive and conscious until then._

"You're going to be okay," she said, hearing her own voice in her ears in a way that wasn't entirely normal and should probably worry her more.

"Did that count as close combat with a reaper?" he rasped, still only forming the words with air and bare needed vibrations.

"Yeah, you know what? We survived close combat with a reaper," she agreed, grinning at the gallow's humour. "So you gotta stay alive to brag about it, okay? Or I'll be taking all the credit and you'll never hear the end of it." She lowered her voice an octave, mimicking a dourfaced high-muckety-muck. "'The turian who retreated'."

His mandibles flapped, a weird, unsynchronised pattern. "Mmm. Know something, chief?" He tried to look at her, but his eyes were unfocused, filled with pain.

_Ohno, that's not good._ "What's that?"

"Remember you asked what would've happened if we found Earth?"

The question threw her for a spin, but her memory brought up the image easily; a bright pink at Flux, a touchy conversation and a lot of answers. "Yeah, I remember."

"I'm really glad that didn't happen. I've liked serving with you, Ash."

She growled, frustrated, sad, angry, every emotion getting in on the pile-on and leaned over him, leg complaining and getting no say, taking his face in her hands. "Listen up, Vakarian. After everything we've been through? You don't get to quit now. I didn't put up with your sorry turian ass this long just to lose you now? I...I've liked serving with you too, and-- and I want to keep doing it, okay? So keep it together dammit."

He let out a puff of air he really couldn't afford, but his quiet, whispered voice still managed to sound amused. "Well, when you put it that way." A weak hand went behind her neck, tugging her down with the help of gravity until their faces touched; a light, careful touch, a thousand times more intimate than holding hands. His blood smeared onto her forehead, but she didn't care.

They stayed like that, exhausted, bleeding, together, not letting go until Doctor Chakwas arrived with a pair of gurneys.

*

Outside _Normandy_ , the war ended.


	13. Epilogue, When Words are No Longer Needed

_A few months later._

*

"Don't tell me you still don't know anything about my physiology?" Garrus said suspiciously, eyeing first the blue water in the swimming pool, then Ashley, clad in a stylish blue bathing suit. She was standing on the tiled floor by the pool and getting ready to dive in. At her lascivious grin, he rephrased his question to, "That isn't related to where to aim for best _impact_?"

"What, do turians melt when you get wet?" she asked, mock-concerned.

"Err, no. We _sink_."

She examined him, eyes zeroing in on his, and the sudden mirth blossoming on her lips told him she not only believed him, but found it hilarious.

"Okay, so let's go swim in the kiddie end of the pool! You can stand on the bottom and pretend you're great at swimming. C'mon!"

And just like that, she dove in head first, and Garrus prepared himself for a splash of water that never came. Somehow, human bodies adapted to water just as they adapted to sunshine, though hell if he could figure out how. He wandered after her on the wet tiles, glancing around the lush garden by old habit to spot any differences in the environment that might herald a problem. But the only thing of note was Joker and James still arguing over the grill over on the patio near the house; a _villa_ Shepard had called it. It was large and spacious whatever the correct terminology was. And he reflected with a flush of warmth that even though he had his own bedroom, he didn't spend all that many nights there.

Ashley beat him to the "kiddie end" of the pool in a few arm movements that looked like they couldn't possibly propel a person forward in water, yet obviously did, and effectively. She glid up to the edge and patted the side impatiently. He sat down gingerly, getting the badly-fitting swimming pants - donated by Joker and adorned with planets - wet first, then carefully submerged his legs.

"Oh, that's warm. Nice, actually," he mused. The house was located near Earth's equator, putting it in the temperature range that matched Palaven closest, but most water he'd encountered so far had been significantly cold--

\--unlike humans, turians did make a splash, especially when they were unceremoniously yanked into the pool without warning. A moment's flash of fear ran through him, but two strong, warm hands on either side of his waist steadied him until his legs managed to find the bottom of the pool. Straight down, strangely enough. Then Ashley pressed herself against his chest until he was both most of the way submerged, and comfortably trapped between her and the pool wall.

Satisfied with her catch, she smiled - coo'd, actually. Her fingers scraped and trailed along his ribcage, finding their way into every sensitive place with her customary skillful aim, and avoiding his scars the same way. "Nice, isn't it?" she purred, then interrupted his answer with a playful nibble on his left mandible that... pretty much interrupted everything else he'd been thinking, too, until she decided he'd been properly teased. Then came a splash he 100% predicted; but was helpless to defend against.

Satisfied her diversion was successfully, Ashley declared, "Race you to the end of the pool!" and kicked off against the side--

\--but not faster than he was able to catch her by the ankle, interrupting her getaway and pulling her back to him. Her hair formed a beautiful sunfeather pattern in the water, and she laughed and twisted around in his grip until they ended back up in another full embrace. The water was warm, but her skin positively radiated.

"Or how about I stay right here and keep you from drowning," she substituted, both arms around his cowl to keep herself floating in a complete reverse of what she said. He shifted and took a careful two steps along the edge of the pool, enjoying the way her legs floated along.

"Mmm, saved from certain doom once again by the daring Ashley Williams. I could get used to this."

"Damn straight you could," she smiled, "Because I'm not going anywhere so you'll just have to put up with it." Her nimble wet human fingers teased their way up his neck again, and her warm lips followed after.

"Know what?" he asked in the few seconds he had left before she went all-in and talking would be too much of a hassle. "That's okay by me."

* END *


End file.
